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Almond Tartlets

Almond Tartlets are small pastry cups filled with a sweet almond cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Almond Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line pattypans with light pastry.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, boil the cream with the sugar, stirring constantly, until only 1 cup remains.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the butter and ground almonds.

  3. Combine the almond mixture with the boiled cream mixture.

Bake

  1. Fill the tartlets with the mixture and bake until set.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds moisture and richness, and reduces to thicken the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich texture in the filling.
Sweet almonds
Provide nutty flavor and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the cream and sugar until only 1 cup remains. Sugary cream can scorch on the bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly. Reducing it concentrates the cream and thickens the filling so it sets properly when baked.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg, butter):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Filbertfits less well
  4. Pistachiofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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